


Engine Won't Turn

by yet_intrepid



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Economics, Gen, Holding Hands, Hurt Shiro, Implied/Referenced Torture, Major Character Injury, Matt Holt has PTSD, Poverty, Prison Capitalism, Reunions, She/Her Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shiro (Voltron)'s Missing Year, Shiro Week 2016, food insecurity, mentions of vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-02 11:56:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8666515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: Day Seven of Shiro Week: AU. Shiro, after a serious injury to his arm, is retired from the arena and sent to a work camp. He'd look for the Holts, but he's a little preoccupied working long shifts with heavy machinery while infection slowly takes hold.(The "graphic depictions of violence" warning applies to chapter 6.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am guessing this fic will have three chapters. I am HOPING.
> 
> Credit for the idea of Galra prisoners working for some kind of "pay" which they then must spend on basic needs goes to [one_more_knight](http://archiveofourown.org/users/one_more_knight/pseuds/one_more_knight)!

Shiro’s right arm is the only thing he can feel.

He’s walking, somehow—stumbling off the transport ship in a long line of prisoners, taking his first steps planetside—but everything is hazy. The pain has been relentless for days now, ever since his last fight, the one where his opponent’s falling body smashed his arm.

His cellmates had helped him splint the arm and put it in an improvised sling, but Shiro isn’t sure how much good that’s doing. His hand was crushed too, for one thing, and that was impossible to straighten out completely. And there’s the bleeding, too, all the cuts and bruises and mangled skin. If they get infected, he won’t make it. There’s no way.

As he follows the others into a massive building, Shiro tries to summon up some gratitude for being out of the planet’s harsh wind. The building itself is still cold, though, and when he shivers, he tells himself it’s the temperature, not the pain. But he’s dizzy, too, sweating against the chilly air, and that’s harder to explain away.

The guards drive them onwards through the opening hallway. Shiro gets glimpses of rooms full of moving parts, hears the hum of machinery. It’s a factory, he realizes. He’s been sent to the work camps after all.

Hope of finding the Holts leaps up inside him, and he doesn’t have the energy to squash it down. He knows it’s improbable, knows the Galra must have hundreds of these camps, knows that his teammates could well be dead by now. But everyone has to cling to something, and Shiro decides he’ll allow himself this tiny thread. Without it, it’d be too easy to give up. Stop eating, stop using his water ration to cleanse his arm against infection. He already gave away almost all his stocked-up credits from wins in the arena, and from what he can see of the workers here, it looks like they barely earn enough to eat.

It’d be so, so easy to give up.

They’re being sectioned off, now, groups of them herded through different doors off the corridor. Shiro’s broken arm gets jostled as the flow of the crowd moves him into a long room. All the machines are currently being worked, but each new prisoner, after being handed glasses and gloves, gets assigned to one. Shiro’s directed towards something that’s boring holes into thick metal tubes about as long as his forearm. It seems to switch off automatically. The alien working it removes the finished tube and moves it onto a conveyor belt, then turns to look at Shiro, who’s got his glasses on and is struggling to pull a glove onto his left hand, the one that’s not in the sling.

She—or at least Shiro guesses she’s a she—is taller than he is and, though humanoid, resembles a fish more than anything else he can think of. Her gloved hands grab for a new tube; she doesn’t have to look away from him to pick it up. After she settles it into the machine, clamps it in place, and flips on the power, she shakes her head at him.

“Come here,” she says, over the roar that fills the room. “I don’t know how you’ll keep up with your arm like that, but you’d better. Whole room gets punished if we don’t make quota, but they’re sure to find where it got held up, too.”

Shiro steps closer to her, swallowing. “I’ll—I’ll do my best,” he says, his voice straining as he tries to figure out the machine. It’s so hard to concentrate with the pain shouting in his head, and the fine spit of grit and sparks coming from the machine makes him flinch.

She grunts as the machine winds down, her hands flying to unclamp the tube and move it onto the conveyer belt. “I mean, won’t hurt me either way, I’m guessing you’ve all been brought in to run night shifts. But if you want friends here, don’t be the reason anybody’s pay gets docked.”

Shiro nods. It makes sense, after all—they’re all just trying to survive, and if one person’s weakness brings the rest down, that person’s not going to get any kindness. “What’s quota?” he asks.

She jerks her head towards a screen over the door, showing tallies and an almost-full progress bar. There’s also a timer, however, which is nearing zero. “We’re behind today,” she tells him. “Of all days for them to bring us trainees! But we had to wait for a delivery this morning before we could get started, so it wasn’t our fault—not that that’ll matter to them. They might give you all a lower goal for the first shift, but it depends on what supervisor you get, so don’t count on it.”

“Thanks,” Shiro says. “For the warning. What’s your name?”

“Oon,” she tells him, her hands busy as ever. “You?”

“Shiro.” He’s not Champion. Not anymore.

\----

He doesn’t know how he makes it through that first shift. Oon lets him try the process once or twice before she gets off, but with only one functional hand, he struggles with the clamps. When her shift finishes, quota hasn’t been met, and Shiro winces as the supervisor announces a cut to the daily credits amount, which is already low by standards in the arena. He wonders if the prices for food and water are the same here; maybe arena economy is just inflated.

Then his own shift starts, long and exhausting, varied only by the types of pain that spike through his broken arm. Before the timer ends, his left arm hurts insistently too—the tubes are heavy and the clamps stubborn, and he closed a finger into the machine once. Thankfully it wasn’t running, but the fingertip still throbs.

They fall woefully short of quota. The supervisor tells them he won’t look for the cause this time, but if it happens again, whoever slowed things down will get a beating, not just a pay cut. Shiro trades his entire day’s earnings for two rations of water and a quarter-ration of the weird Galra porridge that tastes like spinach. He eats the porridge in three bites, drinks half the water, uses the rest to clean metal shavings from his injured arm, then stumbles into the cell they assign him and reconsiders giving up.

\----

Eight days later, his shift makes quota for the first time. Shiro hasn’t been beaten yet, but he’s had to watch others tied up for it, and each time he knows he barely cleared the danger. But tonight—or this morning, really, Oon was right about the night shifts—is a time to breathe. He’s got enough credits to eat now _and_ before he goes to work tomorrow, without dipping into the small pile reserves he came in with. It’s something to celebrate.

Shiro settles dizzily onto a bench with his bowl of soup. He can’t identify what’s in it, but that’s something he hasn’t worried about since the early days of his captivity. It’s food, and it’s warm, and he’s neither working nor stuck in shared his six-by-six cell. He’ll take it.

Someone sits down beside him. Shiro pulls away from them a little, shifting his injured arm so it won’t get bumped. As he looks over, he sees that it’s Ghazik, who works after him on the assembly line—a male alien, with a hawk-like beak and patches of feathers.

Ghazik twitches stiffly as he eats, and Shiro suddenly remembers through the constant pain-fog in his brain: he’s the one who was beaten yesterday for holding up production.

“So, Champion,” Ghazik says, voice laced with bitterness.

“Shiro,” says Shiro, cautiously. He sways a little, even sitting on the bench, but he tells himself it’s okay. After he eats and cleans his arm, he can go to sleep. “I’m no champion anymore.”

Ghazik clicks his beak. “You’re right about that. Are you going to keep being the reason we all get our pay docked?”

Shiro swallows, but keeps his voice steady. “We made quota today.”

“Barely.” Ghazik shakes his head. “Don’t think I don’t see you slacking, Champion. And I’ll throw you to the Galra in a wing-beat before I take a beating for you again.”

Guilt shoots through Shiro, sharper than the pain. “I didn’t mean—” he says. “Please. I wanted to—”

“Save your stories,” Ghazik interrupts, even though he must know Shiro is telling the truth. There’s an unspoken policy in this camp: _no self-sacrifice_. And Shiro hates it, but he understands that with his arm like this, getting a beating would make him almost nonfunctional. He’d just slow the work down even more.

But Ghazik doesn’t care, and Shiro understands that, too. It was Shiro’s beating Ghazik had taken. It’s Shiro who deserves to feel that old familiar soreness in every movement.

“I don’t want excuses,” Ghazik tells him. “Just making it clear, Champion—next time we miss quota, I’m telling on you.”

“That’s fair,” says Shiro. He tries to smile at Ghazik, but it comes out grim. “I’ll see you at work.”

Ghazik clicks his beak again, and Shiro stands up. His legs wobble and his breath catches. It’s like this arm is leeching everything out of him, all his energy, all his reserves to deal. He’s got nausea rising, too, and anger flashes through him. If he could just cut the fucking thing off—

Back in his cell, as he tries to clean his arm without removing the sling he can’t put back on alone, Shiro throws up. So much for the luxury of a whole meal.

\----

He can’t see. Everything is bright, gray, swirling. Everything hurts.

The whistle hurts. He has to get up. He has to go to work. Oon is getting off her shift. It’s Shiro’s turn. Can’t let the others down, can’t hold things up. Can’t get beaten again.

He tries to get up. Looks down at his feet. Are they his feet? They’re going, though, getting up and following everyone. That’s good. He has to go. He has to work.

Everything hurts and everything is loud, squeaking and grinding and thudding. He’s in the room now. The right room. Right? Right. He has to cross it, has to stop leaning on the wall.

“Shiro?” It’s a nice voice. Not Galra, not Ghazik either.

“Oon?” His voice slurs. Oh no. He’s going to throw up again. He hasn’t even eaten anything to throw up.

“Shiro,” Oon says, low and urgent.

“Gotta get to work,” he tries to say. Tries to step past her. Stumbles.

She catches him. Everything hurts. Everything is very fast and very slow. “Shiro, are you hurt?”

Shiro blinks at her.

“What hurts?”

“Everything?” He tries to remember. His back, his thighs. They beat him. His _arm_ —

He points at it. Oon pushes him to sit on the floor and Shiro settles with a thump. “Work,” he mutters.

She unties the sling. Shiro hears her retch.

“Guard!” she’s yelling, but not at him. He can’t hear everything she says, something about _arm_ and _doctor_ and _going to lose a worker_. Shiro knows that part. He has to work, he can’t—

There’s more yelling. Shiro doesn’t know. He tries to get up but the sling is gone and his arm falls from his lap as he gets his feet under him. He’s screaming, maybe.

He’s screaming.


	2. Chapter 2

“117-9873, get over here!”

Matt is lucky. He tries to remember that. His leg healed in the first couple weeks here, and the Galra have finally—finally—recognized his tech skills and moved him out of the factory proper. He assists with design and testing, which means they have to listen to him sometimes. And he’s learned when to speak up and when not to. It’s been frustrating, but he’s learned.

“117-9873, where the hell are you?”

He’s lucky, he reminds himself. His boss, Xar, is as much an asshole as the rest of the Galra, but Matt’s doing work he’s suited to now, work that doesn’t gash holes of boredom into his brain.

He finishes screwing a piece into their current prototype and slides off the bench that’s still too tall for him (he’s going to be five-foot-three _forever_ if he doesn’t get some proper nutrition soon) and hurries into the next room, where Xar is fiddling with something.

“Show me your arm,” he says.

Matt obeys, pushing up his sleeve and laying his hand on the table. Xar picks it up, bending the fingers and feeling the bones.

Matt wiggles a little, curiosity and nervousness building up in him.

“Pull up your records,” Xar says, letting go of his arm.

Okay, if this keeps going, Matt’s going to have to say something. This is _weird_. But he heads over to the computer panel, which is always logged in with Xar’s passcode (a mistake—Matt stole that info the first day he got here) and taps buttons to pull up his file.

“Sir?” he asks. “Any particular part of the file?”

“The druid research,” Xar says. “Anatomy, physiology. Anything about the nervous system.”

Matt wants to throw up. The druids’ idea of research had been—well, it wouldn’t pass any ethics committee on Earth, that’s for sure. If he’s going back into that, he takes back everything he’s ever said about this job being better. He will go back to pulling heavy levers right the fuck now, thank you very much.

But he pulls up the research, carefully ignoring the photos of his own pain-contorted face, and waits. Xar turns over to the computer and flips through some reverse-engineered diagrams of the nervous system, then zooms in on the shoulder and arm.

“There’s another human downstairs,” Xar says. “He’s getting sent up here to—”

Matt doesn’t hear another word. Another human, oh God. Either they’ve caught Dad—and they haven’t, they can’t have, it’s been months since he escaped—or it’s some new Earth astronaut, which would make no sense, or else—

Oh God, Shiro is alive?

Xar smacks him. Not hard, but enough that Matt snaps back to the present.

“Sorry,” he says automatically, shoving his perpetually-bent glasses back into place.

Xar raises an eyebrow, but keeps going. “They said he’s a good worker, if a bit hard to control at times. I say it’s a risk whether he’ll still be worth keeping around after amputation, but that wasn’t my call. I’m making him a prosthetic, just a clamp, nothing fancy. But he’ll need monitoring and testing, and I can’t be bothered.”

“Yes sir,” says Matt, still on autopilot. His brain is running at lightspeed. Shiro is alive? Shiro had an amputation? Monitor and test Shiro? _Him_?

It might not be Shiro, he reminds himself. Logically, what are the chances—

But fuck logic, Matt decides, and he throws himself into discussion of prosthetics and human physiology until at last, at long last, the door opens.

 It’s two of the robots, carrying a stretcher between them. On the stretcher is Shiro, his fringe gone white, one of his arms hanging limply so it drags at the ground. His other arm is gone, just inches of it left extending from the tourniquet below his shoulder.

“What the fuck,” says Matt, under his breath. “What the fuck, what the fuck, oh my God, Shiro, what the fucking fuck—”

Xar barks out his number and Matt rushes over to the table, where the robots have set the stretcher. Shiro’s eyes are open but glassy; when Matt leans over him, there’s no recognition on his face.

“Shiro?” he says, and his voice shakes.

“Get me a measuring tape,” Xar interrupts, and Matt feels frozen where he stands until Xar hits him again. Then he reacts on instinct, scurrying over to the drawers to find the measuring tape marked with Galra units that he’s not sure of the name of, unrolling it in his haste, scrambling back over to the table. Xar makes some measurements, takes some notes on his pad, and waves dismissively.

“Hook him up to this,” he tells Matt, handing him a monitor of some kind. “No, not here! Off in your cell.” Xar jerks his head at the robots. “Get him off my table. And you, 117-9873—go on. Stay out of the lab until you get less clumsy. I won’t have you breaking the prototypes.”

\----

On the one hand, Matt thinks, back in his cell, as he figures out how to attach the tubes and wires to Shiro, he should be offended. He’d _never_ break a prototype. On the other hand, though, now he’s with Shiro. Alone. And they get to stay that way until he settles down, which will probably be never.

His hands shake as he unsticks the last adhesive from its backing and presses it to the bare skin of Shiro’s chest, then drapes a rough blanket over him. Shiro still isn’t properly awake, which makes Matt nervous, but his breathing is steady, making the blanket rise and fall. And Matt’s not sure what kind of data the monitor is collecting, but it’s not sounding any alerts.

“Okay,” Matt tells himself. He sits cross-legged, slumping against the wall of his cell. “Okay. This is fine. This is—this is good. Shiro’s okay. I mean, not okay because his arm is cut off, that’s pretty terrible, and also he’s here, which is also terrible. But he’s alive. That’s good. He’s alive, you’re alive, Dad’s—Dad’s probably fighting Garrison bureaucracy with everything he’s got.” Matt laughs to himself a little. “Okay. Just gotta—gotta stay alive some more, Shiro, okay? And then we’ll get the fuck out of here.”

Shiro stirs a little, his remaining hand sliding out from under the blanket to grasp at air. On impulse, Matt catches it in his own. The fingers are cold, slick with sweat, and Matt glances nervously at the monitor. It’s still ticking steadily away.

He holds Shiro’s hand for a long time, watching him breathe, holding onto the fact that if Shiro made it through gladiator battles and losing his goddamn arm, he can survive whatever comes next. They can both survive it.

Not if they don’t eat, though. That’s the one downside of being banished from the lab—he’s pretty sure he’s not getting paid to sit here with Shiro, running a simple monitor he can’t even read. He earns enough to eat and still have a little left over, usually, but a while back he started using his savings to rent the blanket. He’ll have to give that back if he needs to feed two people without any certainty of when he’ll next get paid.

Matt sighs, finally letting go of Shiro’s hand so he can adjust his glasses and rub at his temples. He can’t remember exactly how much he’s got in his account right now, and he’d have to access a pad or computer to look it up. Not having his own devices is so fucking frustrating, he thinks, running a hand through his hair. He doesn’t even know if Shiro has any credits—probably not, if he was working in production. Matt knows firsthand how shit the pay is for those jobs.

“What did you do, huh?” he asks Shiro softly. “How’d you end up here?”

Shiro doesn’t respond. He’s asleep, Matt thinks, or out; his eyes have been closed for a bit now. He’s still restless, though, face twitching, hand worrying at the blanket. Matt decides it’s time to hold hands again. He’ll be a little embarrassed about it when Shiro wakes up, sure, but he hasn’t had a friendly touch since—well, since Dad escaped, probably. He gets desperate for it sometimes, alone at night, or during the times at work when he feels like he’s floating, watching himself do and say things. 

Something clanks in the hallway. There’s a chance it’s a guard, or one of the people who work in supplies, so Matt goes and bangs on the door. Maybe he can check his credits balance, get Shiro some water.

“Stand back,” the clanking person answers. “Hands on your head.”

Matt obeys, stepping as far away from the door as he can without standing on Shiro. The door slides up, a field of energy bars activating in its wake. On the other side is one of the supplies personnel, a Galra but not a warrior, and Matt breathes out in gratitude.

“Hey,” he says. “Can I check my balance?”

The Galra pulls out a pad. “ID?”

“117-9873.”

“Thirty-five credits.”

Matt calculates some things in his head. A ration of water is two credits, and Shiro probably needs a couple of those a day while he’s recovering. Plus they’ve got to eat at least a little, and that costs too.

He grimaces. If he only spends seven credits a day between the two of them, he can still only go five days of no pay. Xar might call him back in tomorrow, but it might be a lot longer than that.

“Can I check another account, please?” Matt jerks his elbow at Shiro’s blanket-covered form. “This guy’s.”

“ID?”

“117-9875.”

“Two hundred credits.”

“Thanks,” says Matt, not letting his shock and relief show. “Can you put me down for three water rations, one bread ration, and half a soup ration?”

The Galra eyes him suspiciously. “Are you on penal lockdown? You know you can’t buy extra if you are.”

“I’m not,” Matt says. Or at least, he hopes he’s not; there’s no reason for it that he can think of. “Check my file, I should be clear.”

Checking takes a long time. Matt suspects the dude is running clearances on Shiro, too, which makes him nervous. He taps his fingers on the top of his head.

Finally, everything seems to go through. “You’ll get it when the cart comes around tonight,” the Galra says, stowing his pad.

Matt glances back at Shiro. “What would it take for me to get one of those water rations now?”

The Galra hits the button for the door. “More than thirty-five credits.”

“Fine,” Matt says to the slab of metal that slides down in front of his face. “Be that way.” Taking his hands off his head, he turns around.

Shiro’s eyes are open and focused, looking right at him in terror.

“What,” asks Matt, automatically, “is there something on my face?”

Shiro doesn’t move, doesn’t make a sound.

“Fuck,” says Matt, smacking his forehead. He’d go for the wall, but that would actually hurt. “Fuck my goddamn mouth. Not like that. I mean, just, it’s somehow developed sentience and does things without my permission and it should go die, that kind of fuck my mouth, except it shouldn’t actually die because I’d miss it, I have to have it to eat and things besides for talking which is clearly essential to life—”

Shiro still isn’t moving. He’s just starting at Matt, like some kind of ghost.

Ghost.

“Shit,” says Matt, because his mouth is still some sort of wild beast that resists all efforts towards domestication. “Uh, Shiro? It’s me. Sorry, uh, you had surgery I guess and then they brought you to this dude Xar who does tech things, I work for him now, it’s an okay gig for here, uh, sorry, do you know where you are and stuff?”

“Galra?” Shiro asks. His voice is thin.

“Yeah!” Matt grins. “That’s great! I mean not great that you’re here, we’re here, but great that you know.” He plops down on the floor. “Sorry, Shiro, you know how bad I am at this talking thing.”

“Matt,” says Shiro, tentatively.

“Yeah,” says Matt. “Yeah, Shiro, it’s me.”

Shiro turns his face away. His breath catches in his throat.

“Shiro,” Matt starts, but he doesn’t know what to say. Instead, he reaches out for Shiro’s hand again. Shiro grips back and they stay that way a long time, Matt muttering comfort as Shiro cries with thick, wet sobs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr at [andriseup](andriseup.tumblr.com) !


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha, gonna be more than three chapters, people. Oops. Current estimate is five, maybe six.

Shiro wakes up with someone nudging his shoulder.

“Shiro, hey, buddy, come on, I gotta—”

It sounds like Matt. When Shiro squints up, it looks like him too.

“Sorry,” Matt is saying, and Shiro wonders whether he’s still asleep, dreaming. How is Matt here? “Sorry, Shiro, you gotta let me take this blanket off, okay? I have to give it back.”

Something clangs. Shiro startles wildly out of his half-asleep fog to see a Galra guard at the door.

“Thirty seconds before overtime charges,” the guard snaps, and Shiro flinches automatically. Shit, wait, what’s going on?

“Okay, okay,” Matt says hastily, shoving at Shiro a bit. “Shiro, I have to give the blanket back.”

“Okay,” Shiro says. He’s still not sure what’s happening or how he’s with Matt, but obeying the Galra is important if you don’t want to get hurt, and he doesn’t want Matt to get hurt. He untangles himself from the fabric and Matt shoves it through the vibrating bars of energy into the guard’s hands, shocking himself in his hurry.

“Ow, fuck,” Matt swears in Galra, and Shiro tries to lurch towards him to help. But when he moves his arms to push himself up from lying on his back, only his left obeys.

Fuck, Shiro thinks in turn, and he twists to look at his right arm. It’s _not there_.

Everything goes fuzzy, not with dizziness or pain but just sheer shock. What happened? Where is he, what happened, why doesn’t he remember—

“Shiro!” Matt is saying, and Shiro feels a hand on his left shoulder, guiding into a sitting position against the wall. “Shiro, hey, hey. Slow down. You want some water?”

Shiro nods. He tries to focus on Matt’s voice, on the gentle touch, on the pleasantness of sipping at water when Matt raises a cup to his lips.

“My arm,” he says, when he’s had about half the cupful and his breathing has evened out a bit. “My arm, it’s—”

Matt rubs at his back. Waits for him to say it.

“Not there,” Shiro finally manages to finish. “It’s…not there.”

Matt nods. “You had surgery,” he says, slowly. “Do you remember why?”

Shiro concentrates. “It broke,” he says. “In the arena. And then—then I had to work.” He swallows. “It hurt a lot.”

Matt is still moving his hand in slow circles over Shiro’s back. “Did it get infected?”

“Yeah,” says Shiro. “Yeah, I think so.” It’s still hard to think, like he’s gone into the brain-equivalent of Zero G. When he pushes, there’s no resistance, but he doesn’t get anywhere either.

He sighs. “How did you find me?” It’s an easier question than most of the ones floating inside him, after all. _How am I going to survive in captivity if I can’t fight and can’t work_ is—well, it’s unfair to put on Matt, for one, but it’s also something he’s not ready to think of yet.

“I work for this dude named Xar,” Matt says, and Shiro has the vague sensation of having heard this explanation before. “He runs a lot of the tech programs for the factory. Hardware, software, whatever. They brought you up because he’s running some experiments or making a prosthetic or something like that? And I flipped out and got clumsy and so Xar sent me to monitor you because he thought I was gonna break the prototypes.”

“You wouldn’t break prototypes,” Shiro says.

“I know!” For a moment, Matt’s eyes glint with indignation, but then he shakes his head. “But it’s fine. This way I get to look after you. Speaking of which, you should have some more water.”

“Did you buy it with my credits?” Shiro asks. “I have some savings.”

“Nah, I used mine,” Matt says. “But I checked your balance. How do you have two hundred credits, man? That’s insane.”

“Arena,” Shiro says. “Inflation.” He’s too tired to think it through any more than that, and he leans harder against the wall. His right arm—the stump of his right arm—hurts. It’s becoming more insistent as he draws his focus away from his emotional turmoil, but the blurry Zero-G effect is the same.

“Do you think you could eat, actually?” Matt is saying, when he manages to focus again. “I got some soup. Figured that might be easier on your stomach.”

Shiro nods. “If you eat, too.”

Matt groans. “God, Shiro, you never change, do you. Always driving a hard bargain.”

“Hey,” Shiro says, and his voice is thin but he manages to smile. “Me only going on your ridiculous adventures if you finished your homework first was a _deal_ , okay. You got to do what you wanted and what you needed all in one package.”

“Whatever, Professor Shirogane,” Matt laughs. “But fine, I’ll eat if you do.”

“Don’t worry so much,” Shiro says, as he takes the bowl Matt hands him. It’s still warm, and he’s so sleepy. “Two hundred credits lasts a long time here.”

\----

“Hi honey, I’m home!” Matt sing-songs, as he stumbles back into the cell. Shiro sits up—it’s easier now; he can even drag himself to his feet to piss without much trouble—to smile at him. Matt’s carrying some kind of machine, presumably a replacement for the vitals monitor that was taken away this morning. He’s carrying it weirdly close to his face, though, shifting it as he moves, and Shiro squints.

“What’s that?” he asks.

“Swelling monitor,” Matt says. “We fit it to your arm for a day or so and it tracks how fast the swelling is going down and estimates the size we should fit the prosthetic to.” He beams, still holding the thing in front of his face. “I made it.”

Shiro blinks. “He let you? Xar?”

“Well.” Matt draws the word out, hesitating. “Sort of.”

Shiro lifts his eyebrows.

“Okay, so not really.” Matt sighs. “I just figured it was the next step, because if he fits the prosthetic to the swollen arm, it’ll probably fall off at some point. I’m not sure how he’s planning to attach it, but why go through the trouble of making it if it won’t help you be a better worker or whatever it is they want? So I finished what I was supposed to be doing and then I threw this together.”

Matt finally sits down, setting the machine on the floor and resting the left side of his face against the wall.

“And then what?” Shiro asks.

“Then he figured that since I’d already built it, he may as well use it?” Matt shrugs. “You should put it on.”

Shiro shakes his head. “Not until you tell me why you’ve been hiding half your face since the second you got in the door.”

“I’m not—”

“Then show me,” Shiro insists.

Matt bites his lip, then turns his head so Shiro can see. There’s a darkening bruise over his eye, three parallel scratches running down his cheek.

“Matt,” Shiro starts.

“Don’t,” says Matt. “Just—don’t, okay. You lost your goddamn arm and it’s half my fault and this is the least I can do, okay, is make sure that the prosthetic helps more than it hurts.”

Shiro stares at him in shock. “Your fault?”

“Yeah, I mean,” Matt mumbles. “The arena. You know.”

“No,” says Shiro. “I don’t.”

And he doesn’t. It makes no sense to him, that Matt could somehow blame himself for Shiro’s choice. For Shiro injuring him. For Shiro sending him to this miserable life.

“You know,” Matt mutters again. “It was supposed to be my fight.”

“Bullshit,” says Shiro. “The first one, yeah, they were throwing you at that one. But that wasn’t the one that broke my arm, man. It could’ve happened anyway. Could’ve happened if you’d died in the ring, and then where would I be?”

Matt looks at the floor and doesn’t say anything, but Shiro sees the sullen twist of his lip.

“You’re bitter that I’m right,” he says.

“I’m bitter because if it were my fault, at least I could pretend I had some kind of agency!” Matt shoots back. “If I made something worse, than clearly there’s a way I could’ve made it better!”

“You are making it better!” Shiro’s tempted to yell, but the last thing they need right now is a guard coming down on them. “You think I’d have made it through post-op without you? When I couldn’t even sit up and buy a cup of water? You think I’d still be alive if you hadn’t been here to help? Fuck’s sake, Matt—”

He breaks off. Matt is curling up into himself, arms wrapped around his knees.

“It’s not enough,” Matt says under his breath. “I’m not—not strong like dad. If I were, I’d get us both out of here.”

Shiro takes a minute to process that sentence. “Wait, Matt. Your dad—he got out?”

Matt looks up at him then. “Yeah. I didn’t tell you? I guess I didn’t. Huh.”

“You’re sure,” Shiro presses, because oh God, how many times has he tried and gotten nowhere? “You’re sure he actually made it out?”

“Mostly sure,” Matt says. “His file is marked as _fugitive prisoner_. If they’d killed him, he’d get the _terminated_ stamp.”

“How—” Shiro starts, ready to learn everything he can about tactics and methods, but then he sees Matt’s chin shaking. “He left without you.”

“I was supposed to meet him,” Matt says. “I got caught. It’s not his fault, Shiro, really. He couldn’t turn back; if they’d found him stealing a ship he’d have been killed for sure.”

Shiro swallows hard. “How long ago was it?”

Matt shrugs. “Around two months,” he says, wiggling his hand to show he’s estimating. “It was after I got moved to tech work—Dad was transferred there basically right away, and we hardly saw each other until I started working for Xar. And by the time I got there, Dad already had a plan, and he altered it so I could come too, and then I fucked it up. ”

“Matt,” Shiro says, softly. “I’m sorry.”

Matt half-laughs, undertones of a sob threatening to break through. “For what? Me being totally incompetent?”

“You _aren’t_ incompetent,” Shiro insists. “You’re brave; you’ve learned to survive here. And you’re a genius with tech. Look—just look at this thing.” He points to the swelling monitor. “We should give it a test run, since you worked so hard on it.”

Matt brushes his fingertips over his scratched cheek, his black eye. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay. Let’s test it.”

Shiro shifts so that Matt can reach better, and Matt’s gentle as he fixes four adhesive-backed sensors to Shiro’s stump, then connects cords from the sensors to the machine.

“He wants to see you tomorrow,” Matt says, as though remembering suddenly. “He wants to do some sort of preliminary thing, I don’t know what—if he’s actually gonna use the data from this thing, it’s not like he could do a fitting, and there’s nothing about human physiology he couldn’t learn just as well from me. But yeah, just a warning, they’ll bring you into the lab at some point. Xar—he’s not like the druids, I don’t think. He hasn’t done any shitty testing with me.”

“That’s good,” says Shiro. Memories of the druids’ labs pull at him, and with an effort he reorients himself in the cell. “But you don’t know what he wants?”

“Nah,” says Matt. His brow creases as he fidgets a little more with the machine, then backs away. “Find out tomorrow, I guess. Hey, did the food cart come around yet?”

“Not yet,” Shiro says. “We’ve got some water left from this morning, though. You should use it to wipe out those scratches.”

“We shouldn’t,” Matt starts, “the money—”

Shiro shakes his head. “You’re earning again, right? And there’s still what I have left from the arena. We’ll get more water when the cart comes.”

“Fine,” says Matt, but the wrinkles across his forehead don’t ease, and Shiro is too tired to ask him why.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm supposed to be writing fluffy Christmas fic but....this happened instead.
> 
> Oops.

What a goddamn pain, Matt thinks, rolling onto his back. He thought he’d gotten past the insomnia, worked his way into a weariness that not even fear and pain could keep away. But since Shiro showed up, Matt can’t sleep anymore.

He looks over at Shiro, who’s curled up on his left side. The swelling monitor attached to what’s left of his right arm beeps occasionally, a small blue light flickering. Matt sighs. He’s got to get this off his chest, but he doesn’t want to steal any sleep Shiro could be getting.

He sits up, instead, and runs a hand over his sore face. Maybe it was just an empty threat, maybe Xar won’t really—but when have the Galra ever picked the less terrible of the available options? Goddamn, he thinks again, and he tips his head back against the wall with an inadvertent _thunk_.

“Matt?” Shiro says, sleep slurring his voice. He shifts in the darkness.

“Yeah,” says Matt.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” Matt says. “Go back to sleep, okay, everything’s—”

He can’t finish the lie. Unwanted emotions swell in his throat.

“Matt,” says Shiro again, as the silence ticks on. He still sounds sleepy but he’s firm now, his stupid self-discipline rising to the top. “What’s wrong?”

Matt swallows. Swallows again.

Shiro sits up. “Hey,” he says. “What’s wrong?”

“I,” Matt chokes out, “I lied to you.”

“Lied to me?”

“Not exactly,” Matt qualifies. “But I didn’t, I didn’t tell you everything. About what happened with Xar.”

The monitor beeps. Matt can hear Shiro’s sharp intake of breath.

“How else did he hurt you?”

“What?” Matt asks. “No, no. Not that. But he—he—”

“Matt,” says Shiro, level and steady and a little sharp. “What happened?”

Matt takes a deep breath. “When I made the monitor,” he said, “and he caught me, he hit me a little, you saw all that. But he also, he told me that you, told me that you—”

Shiro is unbearably patient; Matt wants to hide from it. Shiro should be angry, shouldn’t be treating him this way.

“He told me you’d have to pay for the prosthetic,” Matt finally spits out. “And the swelling monitor. That they were going to bill you. I don’t know if they were going to make you pay for the prosthetic anyway, but the machine, that’s my fault, and fuck, Shiro, I’m sorry! I thought I could get away with it, I should know better.” He shakes his head, driving himself on. “And I—I almost asked if he’d just take it out on me instead, you know, put me on lockdown or whatever, because it’s my fault, but then I wouldn’t be able to take care of you and so I didn’t, but I’m—I’m sorry.”

He stops. Much as he wants to hide his face in his hands, he peers over at Shiro instead.

“Okay,” says Shiro, “so what I hear you saying is that you did something to help me, at significant risk to yourself, and it backfired because the Galra hate us, right? And then when you found out it backfired, you thought about making sure you were the one to take the fall instead, but you didn’t do that because you were worried about how you getting punished would affect me?”

Well, shit. “When you put it like that…”

“And then,” Shiro presses on, “you felt guilty not just for doing the thing that’s helping me in the first place, but also for not being able to take the blame without me being impacted too. Right?”

“I guess,” Matt mutters.

Shiro sighs heavily. “And whose fault is it really?”

“What do you mean?”

“Whose fault is it that Xar or whoever else decided to charge us for this stuff?”

He knows what Shiro’s going for here, but he can’t bring himself to say it. “Mine,” he says instead, because honestly, how dare Shiro underestimate his stubbornness? “My fault, okay.”

“ _Their_ fault,” Shiro insists. “Come on, Matt. The Galra don’t need my hundred and fifty or two hundred credits. They have a whole empire. It’s just like the food prices—they could totally afford to just feed us, with the amount of work we do for them. But they don’t want to, because they’re assholes.”

Matt grimaces. “You’re so fucking _logical_ , you know that?”

Shiro ignores the jab. “Whose fault is it, Matt?”

“Theirs.” Matt sighs. “Happy now?”

“No,” says Shiro. “You’re still angry at yourself.”

“So what?”

“So you’re blaming yourself for a situation in which you’re the victim.”

“Please,” says Matt. “Like you don’t do that all the time.”

“I’m not doing it right now, and you are. Don’t change the subject.”

The monitor beeps. Matt frowns at it.“Doesn’t your arm hurt? Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

“Yes,” says Shiro. “But I’m not going to go to sleep and just let you self-destruct.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“I’m okay with that.”

Matt huffs. “Fuck you, Shiro. Why can’t you just be angry at me? You know, tell me I’m irresponsible or something.”

Shiro laughs softly. “Okay. Blaming yourself for this is _massively_ irresponsible. Is that better?”

“No.” Matt lies back down with his back to the wall, stares up at the blackness that shrouds the ceiling. He can feel his defensiveness slipping, giving way to the need for comfort that he’s pushed away for so long. Something inside him is about five years old. “I just—sometimes it’s easier when people are angry, you know? Like I know what to expect.”

“Like it’s what’s normal.” Shiro nods. “Fuck up, get hurt, do better next time.”

“Yeah.” He’s not sure whether he’s relieved Shiro understands, or angry that Shiro deals with this too. Some of both, maybe. “Yeah.”

“I know,” says Shiro. “But if it were me—if it were me, would you still feel like it should work like that?”

“No.” Matt shuts his eyes. “But you’re better than me.”

Shiro inches towards him then, dragging the monitor along. “I feel that way too sometimes,” he says quietly. “Like you’re better than me.” He settles next to Matt and lies down, too, and Matt can’t resist the need for comfort anymore. He slides closer, tucking his head against Shiro’s shoulder.

“Let’s make a deal,” Shiro murmurs. He’s sounding sleepy again. “I can’t say you’re better than me if you can’t say I’m better than you.”

Matt sighs. He’s sleepy, too, and he has to work in the morning. He doesn’t want to argue anymore.

“Fine,” he says, “asshole,” and he can almost feel Shiro smiling as he closes his eyes.

\----

Shiro comes into the lab on his own two feet this time. His left arm is twisted up, pinned behind his back by the robot guard that’s bringing him in, and there’s a length of chain between his ankles. Matt winces at the precautions, which by the look of things are totally unnecessary—Shiro is still weak, barely managing to walk, and his face is deeply creased with pain. Has it been like that the whole time? It was too dim in the cell for Matt to see.

He wants to rush over and help, but bites his lip instead. He’s already pissed Xar off enough, and with Shiro in the room, Matt can’t risk it. Xar’s already proven himself willing to take revenge on Shiro for Matt’s mistakes.

Besides, Matt is busy. He’s on Xar’s computer, sent there to update Shiro’s file with data from the swelling monitor, but that didn’t take him long. Now he’s digging around in the druid research for purposes of his own. It still turns his stomach, but he’s got to do it.

The robot guard lets Shiro sit down on a bench, then locks his hand into a cuff and secures the other side to a ring on the nearby table. Matt tries to catch Shiro’s eye, but Shiro just stares down at the table.

Yeah, Matt thinks, he guessed right. Shiro’s been in intense pain, and he hasn’t said a word. Well, Matt’s going to fix that.

Xar crosses over to Shiro, the prosthetic in one hand and a set of straps in the other. Matt keeps watch with one eye, scanning a list of chemical compounds with the other. He can’t match any of them with the English names, but it doesn’t matter. All he has to do is remember and check for the Galra ones.

_Goritenix, no effect on subject. Hensiz, hallucinatory. Hygricaxus, highly toxic._

Matt remembers that one. They’d given it to Dad, and he’d vomited so bad he almost died of dehydration before the Galra delivered some sort of antidote. And Matt had been helpless, chained up on the other side of the room, listening to the retching and to Dad telling him _don’t worry, son, Matt, listen, I’m just glad it’s me and not you_ —

Matt shakes himself, takes a couple deep breaths, and keeps scanning the list until he finds what he’s looking for—the compound that forms the base for a pain med he snuck off the shelf this morning.

_Jarex, mild sedative, pain relief._

He adjusts his glasses, trying not to let his relief show. It won’t kill Shiro, and more than that, it’ll probably do some good, like it’s intended to. Thank fuck, honestly, Matt thinks. It’s about time he managed to do something helpful.

Across the room, Shiro lets out a sharp noise of pain. Matt turns around to see Xar fitting the straps over Shiro’s shoulders and shoving the prosthetic into place. Shiro grits his teeth, and Matt wants to burn down the entire factory. The entire empire, really. Shiro doesn’t fucking deserve this.

Xar directs Shiro through a series of motions, and Matt watches the prosthetic react. The straps seem to be doing their job, using the movements of Shiro’s shoulders to leverage the joints in the prosthetic. It takes a long time for Xar to be satisfied, though, and Shiro looks worn out. But when Matt manages to meet his eye, Shiro shakes his head.

So Matt stays where he is. Stays, even as Xar announces the cost of the surgery—anesthesia cost is listed, and Matt’s not sure whether to be angry at its price or just relieved that they put Shiro under before amputating—and the prosthetic. Shiro doesn’t flinch.

“I don’t have two thousand credits,” he says, calmly. “Can I pay in installments?”

Xar raises his eyebrows. “There’ll be interest.”

“I understand,” Shiro says. “When will I be allowed to work again?”

“Tomorrow,” Xar says. Matt’s mouth drops open. What the fuck, he thinks, what the fuck, Shiro can hardly _walk_ and you’re sending him back to the factory tomorrow?  

But Shiro just nods. “I’ll pay it down as fast as I can,” he says, like it’s some nice bike on Earth, or a house. “Thank you for your work, sir.”

Well, at least there’s the pain meds, Matt thinks, as the robot unchains Shiro from the table and pushes him back out of the lab. If Matt keeps his head down, if he stays sharp, he might be able to pass Shiro those until things get a little better.


	5. Chapter 5

For this, at least, Shiro is grateful: they don’t bother moving him out of Matt’s cell.

Every night, Matt comes back from work with two stolen pain pills. Every night, Shiro takes half a pill, and in the morning he takes a whole one. The other half pill he saves, because that way if Matt can’t manage to nab any one day, they have a reserve. There’s nowhere to hide the medicine in their cell, so Shiro stores it in the one pocket his ragged clothes provide.

Almost every night, they argue about the money. Matt’s making twenty-five credits a day, and Shiro’s making fifteen; between the two of them, they spend twelve a day on food and water. Shiro hates it, hates that Matt is eating less in order to put money towards Shiro’s debt. I’ll eat more if you will, Matt always says, and Shiro almost wants to hate him.

But Matt’s right: if they budget, if they keep their heads down, if nothing bad happens, they can pay off the debt in less than three months.

So far it’s been fine, Shiro reminds himself, as he trudges to work with the rest of his shift. He’s working a different machine than he was last time, one that’s a little more complicated, but although his stump aches relentlessly, he keeps up better than he did before. The prosthetic is heavy, clumsy, but he can use it, and he hasn’t been the reason for a pay cut yet.

“Hey,” Oon says, coming up beside him as they enter their workroom. They’re on the same shift now, due to some massive rearranging that happened while Shiro was in recovery. It’s happened before, Oon told him, as a way to make sure prisoners don’t get too connected to each other. That’s how escapes happen, after all.

“Hey,” Shiro answers. “How are you?”

Oon shrugs. “Got a new cellmate. Three of us now. They’re running out of room.”

Shiro grunts in sympathy, starting up his machine. Oon, beside him, starts hers too.

“She’s _new_ ,” Oon says. “Not just new here. She was just taken a week ago.”

“What’s her name?” Shiro asks. He glances over his shoulder to make sure the supervisor isn’t nearby. If he isn’t, they can get away with talking while they work.

“Nyma,” says Oon. “She told me—” and she glances around, too, keeping her hands busy while she does.

“Told you what,” Shiro asks, cautiously.

“There’s—opposition.” Something like a smile sneaks onto her scaly face. “To the Galra. Some old enemy of Zarkon’s, and they’re actually winning battles.”

Shiro stops working. Stares at her. “How—” he starts, but Oon waves her hands frantically, pointing him back to the machine. Shiro lunges awkwardly, switching it off just before it drills into its table.

“And,” Oon continues. “Nyma met them. From what she said, they look like you. Human? That’s what she called their species, I think.”

Shiro’s mouth drops. The supervisor is looking, so with an effort he steadies himself and keeps busy. But shivers run through him still.

Maybe Commander Holt made it back to the Garrison after all.

\----

“We can’t get our hopes up,” Shiro says.

Matt, pacing the cell, scoffs at him. “Can’t get our hopes up? Come on, Shiro. Of all the times to be cynical, you pick now?”

Shiro leans back against the wall. He’s tired, and his stomach is sending out angry pangs—according to Matt’s estimates, they’re eating enough to keep away appetite loss and refeeding syndrome, but Shiro feels like it’s subjectively worse than the times he’s had to go without food altogether. At least then a sort of numbness kicked in.

“I’m not being cynical,” he says, and he knows it comes out snappy but he can’t seem to fix that. “I’m being _practical_.”

“Oh, sure,” Matt snaps back. “Sure. Prepare for the worst, that’s you, Shiro. But it’s supposed to come along with hope for the best.”

“Let’s not fight,” Shiro says. “Please, Matt.”

“You don’t get it,” Matt says. He stops pacing, stands there still in the middle of the room, and he doesn’t look at Shiro. “We’re talking about my _dad_. All this time, I’m trying to tell myself he’s not coming back, right, can’t spend all your time thinking about your dad rescuing you like you thought he always would when you were six, right, like—”

He does look up, then, and Shiro thinks he looks so young, younger than he ever did even before Kerberos. All his concern for Matt, all that loneliness wrapped up in protectiveness and fear, swirls up inside him. Matt’s his only friend here, and Shiro should’ve done better. Should’ve kept Matt safe, kept the hurt out of his eyes and the bruises from his face.

“I tell myself he died all alone,” Matt goes on, “that he landed on a planet without a breathable atmosphere, or he tried to ask some locals for help and got himself shot. I tell myself he’s lost out there somewhere, the ship he stole crashed and he’s living in some cave eating bugs. And I just—I just can’t tell myself that anymore, okay? Not now that there’s actually some evidence for all this stupid hope.”

The silence hangs heavy.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says, when he finally finds his voice. “I’m sorry.”

Matt sits down beside him. “Me too,” he says, and neither of them asks what for.

\----

There’s a clang, and there’s yelling, and Shiro jolts awake. His shoulders shout in protest—he’s still wearing the prosthetic, he realizes; he fell asleep in it—and Matt, leaning up against him, mutters complaints.

“Get up!” someone is yelling in Galra. “Get up, you dirty little—”

Shiro, prying his eyes open, shakes Matt. Matt flounders to his feet, dragging Shiro up with him. They stand there, hands on their heads, staring at the five guards, and Shiro edges in front of Matt because this is bad. This is really bad.

The guards move in. Shiro swallows and doesn’t fight as they pull his arms behind him. The prosthetic grates as they cuff him, then move to Matt.

Matt is robotic, half-frozen. “Sorry,” he says, and Shiro isn’t sure if Matt’s talking to him or to the guards. “Sorry. Sorry.”

“For what?” Shiro whispers back. But Matt doesn’t look at him.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, like he’s on autopilot. “Sorry.”

“Matt,” Shiro tries to tell him, “you didn’t do anything wrong—” but then a guard cuffs his ear and he falls silent. This is already bad. He can’t be making it worse, can’t draw down any more punishment than what they’re already getting.

The guards push them into an elevator. Matt’s still apologizing, over and over, when they emerge into a long hallway Shiro’s never been in before. At the end of the hall there’s a door, and behind the door there’s what looks like a mix between an office and a throne room. Xar is there, looking pissed, and a Galra officer Shiro’s never seen before is in the regal-looking chair behind the desk.

“General,” says the guard holding Matt’s elbow, “here are the thieves.”

 “Sorry,” Matt breathes, his eyes widening as they’re both pushed to their knees. “Sorry—”

“You’re sorry?” The general, clearly understanding through some kind of one-way translation tech, stands up, planting his hands on the desk. “That’s as good as a confession, isn’t it, Xar?”

“General,” Shiro ventures, in his best Galra. “If I may be so bold, what are we accused of?”

The general doesn’t answer. Instead, he rounds the desk, towering over Shiro and Matt. “You,” he says. “You’re the Champion.”

Shiro swallows. “Yes, General.”

“117-9875,” the general reels off, thoughtfully. “You gave good sport in the arena.”

“I live to serve, General,” Shiro says. It falls too easily from his tongue, and he’s almost glad Matt’s too out of it to really listen.

“Of course you do,” says the general. “And yet.”

Shiro keeps his eyes on the floor. Waits. The general’s hand grips his chin, a hint of claw sliding along his throat.

“Did you sell the pills?”

Shiro debates feigning ignorance, if only for the satisfaction of fighting back, but one glance at Matt persuades him otherwise.

“No, General,” he says, biting his lip against fear. “They’re in my pocket.”

The threatening claw recedes from his throat as the general gestures to one of the guards. The guard moves in, patting Shiro down roughly until he hits the pocket with the medication.

“Found it, sir,” the guard says. He empties out the pills, every last one, digging his armored glove against Shiro’s skin.

“Sorry,” Matt is still saying, his gaze fixed and unseeing. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

The general takes the pills in his hand, crushes them into dust. Shiro almost cries out at the callous waste.

“Xar,” the general says, “which of these prisoners works in your lab?”

“That one,” Xar says. He points at Matt.

“Sorry,” Matt says. He sounds all of six years old, and Shiro breaks.

“General,” he says, quiet and desperate. “Please. He did it for me. It’s my fault. Please. Don’t—I’m the one. Please—”

“Put them on penal lockdown,” the general interrupts. “Solitary.”

\----

One ration water. Half-ration spinach-flavored porridge. More worry than he can bear.

Shiro huddles in the corner of his dark cell. It’s been about a day, as far as he can guess—that’s how often he got fed when he was in solitary in the arena, and he doesn’t see any reason it should be different here. He’s sick with anxiety, mostly about Matt. But the way the general was looking at him, too—well. The last thing Shiro wants is to be sent into another arena fight. He figured he was free of them when he got here, when he lost his arm.

Stupid, he thinks. He should know by now that he can count on the Galra to give him exactly what he doesn’t want.

He reaches for the cup of water and drains the last couple drops from it, then touches his wrist to his forehead. It seems warm, maybe feverish, but Shiro isn’t sure. It could just be that his arms—his _arm_ , he reminds himself, singular, arm—his arm is so cold.

He leans back against the wall, pushing his head against it in hopes of relieving his headache a little. His shoulders throb with the weight of the prosthetic, but he doesn’t dare take it off—there’s no way he could put it back on by himself, and if he doesn’t get put back in Matt’s cell after this, he could end up having to work without it. Much as he hates the thing, it’s useful.

But before the struggle of getting back to work, Shiro reminds himself, there’s punishment. He’s pretty sure it won’t just be a couple days in solitary. If slacking on the job got him a beating, stealing from the Galra is sure to earn a worse one.

Unless. Unless they hurt Matt, and let Shiro alone.

He tries to pretend it won’t happen, that the general has some kind of decency—or even a cruel streak, the kind that would pass over Matt because he didn’t seem like he’d be responsive even to pain. If it’d spare Matt, Shiro thinks, he’d do anything. He’d be Champion again. Anything.

On cue, footsteps stop outside his door. Shiro lets them cuff him, follows obediently down to the ground floor—and feels his gut sink as they push him out a side exit into an arena.

There’s snow on the ground, leaking into his rough shoes. The sun overhead glares bright, and for a second Shiro can’t see. They take off the cuffs and shove a weapon at him, a half-dull knife, then push him towards the figure on the opposite side of the arena—someone small, humanoid, with a head of disastrous hair.

Shiro panics. Pushes off the guards. But when the general’s voice comes over the loudspeaker, he freezes.

“The fight is to incapacitation or unconsciousness,” he announces. “If you win, Champion, and please me with a good fight, the sum of two thousand credits is yours.”

As Shiro blinks up at him in horror, the gong for the fight sounds.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLOT HAPPENS HERE. Amazing.

Matt charges. Blood pumps wildly in his brain, and everything’s still a blur as Shiro, dazed, spirals away from him. Matt swallows hard, pivoting with his knife raised. He doesn’t want to hurt Shiro, but two thousand credits? That could pay off their whole debt, keep them eating for a long time, and listen—Matt’s more than willing to take a few hits that were coming anyway in the name of ensuring their survival.

Shiro backs away from him. “Matt,” he says. “Matt, stop!”

Matt swipes indiscriminately with the knife. He doesn’t know how to use it, but he figures he can’t do too much damage if he stays away from Shiro’s face and gut. He can’t think about it, just like Shiro didn’t think when he saved Matt from the arena the first time.

“Stop!” Shiro is yelling now, his voice unsteady. “Think!”

“I want blood,” Matt yells over him. The small audience of supervisors and off-duty guards goes wild, and Matt finally closes in enough to strike out at Shiro’s ribs.

Shiro barely manages to dodge. He’s staring at Matt, wide-eyed.

“Just fight me!” Matt shouts. He makes eye contact, begging Shiro to clue in, and lunges with the knife. Shiro drops his own knife and brings his natural hand up to grapple, easily keeping Matt from doing any damage.

Better, Matt thinks, and tries to kick out. He trips and falls, half-dangling from Shiro’s grip.

Shiro spins, letting Matt fall as he backs off. Matt slips, landing on his back in the snow with a painful thud, and scrambles to get up again. Shiro, he thinks, I’m trying to help you, you goddamn idiot.

Shiro stands there still in the snow, facing the crowd. As Matt gets up, fumbling for his knife, Shiro lowers himself to his knees.

Well shit, they’re doing the Hunger Games thing. Matt sighs and throws the knife away again, making his way to Shiro’s side.

“You sure about this?” he whispers. Shiro nods.

So Matt kneels down, grabbing for Shiro’s hand. Shiro interlaces their fingers, pressing his shoulder to Matt’s.

“What is this?” the general is yelling, and then someone gets on the sound system.

“Prisoner 117-9875 and prisoner 117-9873, you will resume the fight or face punishment.”

Matt swallows hard, but he stays on his knees. The warmth of Shiro’s hand in his is enough to make him face most anything.

“Prisoner 117-9875 and prisoner 117-9873,” the voice repeats. “Resume the fight or face punishment.”

“Ready?” Shiro asks.

“I mean, no,” says Matt.

Shiro smiles at him, tight and sad. “Just stay back.”

“Stay—”

But before Matt can finish the question, Shiro lets go of his hand. He grabs his abandoned knife and lunges, swipes out at the guards.

“No!” Matt yells, and it comes out distant—comical-sounding, he thinks, like a bad actor in a bad, bad play. He wants to run after Shiro but he’s frozen, there on his knees, and there’s blood everywhere. Shiro is a force of nature, a wild thing. He’s cut down five guards and Matt wants to die. This is the stupidest plan. The stupidest, stupidest plan. They’ll both be beaten to death when the fight is over, locked in solitary, split up forever—

Two of the remaining guards grab Matt, snapping cuffs around his wrists. But Shiro wrestles his way out of every chokehold, guts every guard that descend on him. Steals a gun, bashes its owner in the head, fires it point-blank through another Galra’s eye.

Then there’s a click, and Matt’s breath catches as the muzzle of a blaster presses cold against his temple. And Shiro doesn’t turn. Doesn’t see.

Matt looks up. He wants to die seeing this planet’s sun, he thinks, one of those stars he spent so many years trying to get to. One of the first people to meet aliens, that’s him. Matt Holt, Galaxy Garrison scientist. Human. The sun is bright, almost orange, and he stares at it the way Dad always told him not to do. He can almost see it moving, like it’s coming towards him to swallow him up.

Someone is yelling. A lot of people are yelling. It’s not the soundtrack he imagined he’d go out to.

The gun drops. The guards beside him are yelling, too, pointing at the sky, and when Matt looks back up he sees what everyone else has already seen: a huge, huge awesome robot, slamming its feet to the ground right outside the arena. It’s red and yellow and blue and green; it’s got a face; it’s entering atmosphere as if friction doesn’t even exist.

A new set of speakers clicks on. “Disband and disarm,” says a voice, projected from the robot—and it’s a voice Matt knows, somehow, and he’s hearing it in English, or else he’s hallucinating, or else he’s dead.

“Disband and disarm,” the voice repeats. “We are here to free the prisoners. If you fight us, you will die.”

“It’s Voltron,” says the guard next to Matt. He’s shaking. “It’s Voltron.”

“Take me to your leader,” says another voice, and that’s it, Matt is dead, because if he didn’t know better he’d say that was Katie and Katie is _not in space_. Well, she is, because Earth is in space, but Earth is also very far away and that is where Katie is, although someday Matt’s going to get back there and have to tell her he dreamed that she saved his life in a giant robot and she’s going to be insufferable—

The Galra general is coming forward, saying something in a very polite tone. That’s it, Matt dares to think, the giant Voltron robot thing just walked in and won.

And then a Galra fleet breaks into atmosphere.

Matt ducks as a guard grabs for him, as the fleet opens fire. Voltron is shooting back; its green arm grabs a ship in midair, flinging it into a larger ship. Laser bolts slam into the ground.

Shiro, Matt thinks, and starts to look around frantically. It’s hard to get to his feet with his arms behind him and his legs shaking, cold from the snow, but he manages.

“Shiro!” he calls, dodging between guards and guns. He’s unsteady but he’s going, he’s going, and that’s what matters. “Shiro!”

Not far away, some kind of arena obstacle blows up. Matt throws himself forward as heat from the blast washes over him. With his arms behind him, he can’t catch himself, and his ribs flash white with pain. But he’s clear of the explosion and he can’t think about it, can’t think about how many times he’s almost died in the past hour. He struggles to his feet, slipping over and over again in the half-melted snow.

“Shiro!” he keeps shouting, desperate to be heard over the firefight. “Shiro, where are you?”

Then he catches sight of the prosthetic and starts to run.

“Fuck,” Matt breathes, when he gets there. It’s Shiro, all right, lying under the dead body of a guard, and Matt can’t even check for a pulse with his hands cuffed like this. “Shiro, fuck, come on—”

“Mmmph,” says Shiro.

Matt swallows. Okay Holt, he thinks, keep it together, keep it the fuck together.

“Shiro,” he says, “you okay?”

“Hurts,” says Shiro. The exposed part of his face is bruised and bloodied, but not disfigured as far as Matt can tell. There’s no way to really check for a head wound with the way the body is angled over him.

“What hurts?” Matt asks. He leans close so he can hear.

Shiro closes his eyes.

“Oh, no,” Matt says, “none of that shit, you hear me? Voltron came and I was right and you’re going to live to hear me lord it over you every damn day until you’re eighty-five.”

“You said it was your dad,” Shiro points out, groggily. “We don’t know it’s your dad.”

“They were speaking English!” Matt strains against the cuffs, but they’re inflexible. Maybe he should try breaking his thumb, he thinks, but he’d probably be no more use to Shiro with free but broken hands than he is now.

He’s not going to think about it, he’s not going to—but oh God, what if it _is_ Dad? Because that had sounded like Katie, and if it was Dad, it could be Katie, and fucking fuck, Katie is not fighting the Galra. No one he cares about is ever going to so much as lay eyes on the Galra ever again. No one’s going to so much as remember they exist.

“Fucking fuck,” says Matt, in quiet awe. They’re being _rescued_.

“Language, cadet,” says Shiro. He’s still barely awake.

“Cadet yourself,” Matt tells him.

“I graduated.”

“So did I!”

“You walked,” Shiro mumbles. “Official diploma pending post-Kerberos.”

“Yeah well,” says Matt, “I’m sure they graduated me for being dead.”

The firefight is slowing. Matt lays down next to Shiro, because he’s so tired and his ribs hurt and it’s all too much. He can’t deal anymore.

“And Katie is up there shooting lasers in a giant robot,” he says to himself. “Why does she always get all the cool toys?”

\----

When the shooting stops, the giant robot disassembles. Katie really does get all the cool toys, Matt thinks, as five lion-robots land around the arena.

“Hey, uh,” he says. “I’m gonna—I’m gonna go look for help. That okay?”

“Yeah,” says Shiro. He closes his eyes again. “I’ll be here.”

“You’d fuckin’ better,” Matt says.

He gets up, slowly. Every part of his body complains as he finds his way to a door, then a tunnel under the seating, then another door. It’s blessedly, blissfully open, a pile of dead guards propping it wide.

The lions, all different colors, form a semi-circle facing the door he emerges from. They’re huge, even when not combined, and Matt feels a little scared. They’re friends, he reminds himself. They said they were here to free the prisoners.

Then the green lion’s mouth open and someone’s running at him. And it’s instinct, Matt can’t help it; he backs up against the outer wall of the arena and tries to put his hands on his head, but they’re cuffed already. Shit, he thinks, shit, shit—

The running person blurs towards him, all white armor and green accents and that voice, calling his name.

“Matt! Matt, you idiot, Matt—”

The person throws aside her helmet and is Katie, barreling forward at full speed. She crashes into him and he crashes into the wall and he opens his mouth as they sit there in the snow, but he can’t speak.

“Matt?” she says again, and her voice seems suddenly fragile.

“This is fine,” he says. He’s half-delirious with relief, cold and tired and aching as he is. “This is—everything’s good.”

“Is fucking _not_!” Katie yells in his face. “You were out here in the battle! That wasn’t supposed to happen! You were supposed to be safe in your cell or whatever and then I’d open the door and you’d say _aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper_ because face it, this armor looks a little Imperial, and then you’d hug me and you aren’t hugging me, Matt, what the fuck! What the fuck!”

 “Katie,” says another voice, from behind, as she pauses for breath. “I’m sure if you get those cuffs off for him, Matt will hug you.”

Matt’s voice cracks. “Dad?”

Katie is activating some green weapon, and Matt holds still as she works, but as soon as the cuffs drop off he spins around. Dad’s wearing the same armor as Katie, only it doesn’t have any green on it.

“Hug your sister, Matthew,” says Dad. He’s smiling, his face lined with worry, and Matt doesn’t have to be told again. He opens his arms to Katie, lets her squeeze the air from his bruised ribs.

“I was so scared,” she whispers, as he pulls her head to rest on his shoulder. “I was so scared, Matt, I was thinking, what are we gonna do if we get there and he’s not there, but I was in the records and it didn’t say _fugitive_ like Dad’s or _terminated_ like some of the others, but I was still scared, I saw the note on your file for penal lockdown and we were all like shit because that sounded bad and then we got here and it _was_ bad and Matt, oh my God—”

“Katie,” Matt says. Something inside him grows heavy. “Stay out of my file.”

“I was trying to find you, you ungrateful dick,” Katie shoots back. “Dad, tell him we had to look at it!”

Dad reaches for Matt, giving him a hand up, lifting him into a Dad hug like nothing else in the goddamn universe. “It’s true, Matt,” he says. “We had to make sure you hadn’t been relocated. And we had to make sure you were alive.”

Matt swallows. He hopes Katie didn’t see the druid research, but knowing her, she probably read every last experiment write-up.

“Dad,” he whispers. “Dad.”

Dad murmurs instructions over some comlink in his helmet. And he holds Matt, keeps holding him, even while Matt shakes and weeps and struggles for breath.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LAST CHAPTER HERE GO

When Shiro wakes, there’s not a body on top of him anymore.

He opens his eyes—or one of them, rather. The other seems to be swollen shut. He’s lying on his back, and there’s a ceiling overhead. Someone moved him.

“Stay still,” says a voice. They’re speaking Galra, but with an accent.

Shiro turns his head—just his head, because his body aches all over. He’s sticky with bloody, his mind still foggy. “Ghazik?”

“Champion,” Ghazik says, his voice low and threatening. “I told you to stay still.”

“Where am I?” Shiro demands. “Where’s Matt?”

There’s a noise outside and Ghazik turns his back, walking to the door of the cell they’re in. It’s unlocked, somehow, and slides open. Xar steps in.

“Get up,” Xar snaps. “On your knees.”

Shiro tries. He really tries. But when he uses his prosthetic to push off the floor, he cries out and collapses back down. Ghazik grabs him by the shoulders and pulls him up, instead.

Shiro puts his hands on his head. At least he can do that much.

Xar cuffs him, prosthetic to natural wrist, and drags him out of the cell. “I got a message telling me to keep you, Champion,” he says. “The druids have taken an interest. I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear you’ll be back to the arena soon so you can pay off your debt.”

Shiro makes an effort to get to his feet, but he can’t. He’s too tired, too drained, and he can’t even remember what happened. Why isn’t he dead? Why—

Xar pulls him by the legs, Ghazik following behind. Xar is complimenting Ghazik on good work, promising some kind of reward, but Shiro can’t really make out the Galra words anymore. His head fuzzes like static.

Then there’s a louder noise, like guns, and Xar starts running. Shiro bumps along the floor after him, unable to keep back his groans. Then there’s a blur, white armor, yelling, and Xar drops Shiro to pull Ghazik in front of him, and then Ghazik is screaming.

“No,” Shiro tries to say. “No, no—”

Ghazik’s body thumps to the floor. Xar bends down, reaching for Shiro instead.

“You’d better think twice about that,” says someone from behind them. Xar tries to whirl around with Shiro in front of him, but Shiro is dead weight and the attacker is too fast.

They fall together, blood everywhere. Shiro can’t see.

And then someone is saying his name, lifting him up so gently it almost doesn’t hurt at all, and there’s more yelling that he doesn’t understand. “Nope, no no no, _I’m_ saving Shiro,” he thinks he hears, but that doesn’t make any sense, and the world grays out.

He catches just snippets after that—someone carrying him outside, the cold, the bright light. More yelling. Something about a castle, something about lions.

And his name, over and over. Not Champion, not a number. His name.

Everyone has to have something to cling to, he thinks, and he vaguely remembers thinking that before. And _Shiro_ , people say, over and over, and Shiro grips that knowledge hard to stem the relentless pain.

\---

He wakes falling, wakes with arms wrapping around him, and he panics. He can’t remember what happened, where is he, he’s back with the druids for sure, Xar said they wanted him—

“Shiro!” The voice is close by, familiar. Shiro shakes the fog from his head and peers through the tangle of bodies.

“Keith?” he asks. He tries to focus, tries to get a glimpse of where he is. It doesn’t look like a Galra ship, but it doesn’t look Garrison either.

“Shiro,” Keith says again, “Calm down, okay. We’re in the Altean castle.”

Shiro squints at his surroundings, at Keith’s face. “You,” he says, “you rescued me. In a robot?”

“Yep,” says Keith.

Shiro can feel his breath quicken. No, no, no. Keith is supposed to be on Earth, at the Garrison, graduating and getting his own missions. This isn’t right, it’s not—

“Hey,” says Matt, from Shiro’s other side. “Breathe, okay? In and out. With me, come on.”

Matt inhales deep. Shiro tries to mirror it, but he feels all shuddery and scared. Matt and Keith keep their hands on his shoulders, guiding him to sit on some steps.

“We had to put you under to take care of your injuries,” Keith explains. “You had some nasty cuts, but the cryopod took care of it for you.”

On instinct, Shiro looks down at where his right arm used to be. It’s still missing, and the Galra prosthetic is gone too. Disappointment washes over him, followed by a profound relief.

“They said they’ll get you a new prosthetic,” Matt puts in. “If you want one.”

“I can’t,” Shiro says, even though he knows it doesn’t make sense. “I don’t have any credits—”

“Don’t have what?” Keith says, his voice rising. There’s a hint of anger in it, and Shiro fights hard not to cringe back.

“You had to pay for everything in there,” Matt explains to Keith, quickly. “We were in debt. Interest, whole nine yards. It was a mess.”

“ _We_ weren’t in debt,” Shiro says. “I was.”

“Same difference, dude,” Matt says. “And by the way, I was right, Mr. I’m-Just-Being-Practical. It _was_ my dad.”

Shiro laughs. The sound is strange, scratching against his throat, but he doesn’t care. “Did you predict the robot, too?” he asks.

Matt laughs, too. “Duh. That was my escape plan all along, didn’t I tell you? Just wait for the giant robot.”

“Can’t have been,” Shiro says. “You’d never have been able to keep that a secret.”

Matt’s laugh sounds unfamiliar too, he thinks, like it’s out of practice. Shiro sighs, shifting to lean his head on Keith’s shoulder. He’s tired, tired and disoriented and—somehow—deeply sad. But in the arena he’d been sure this would never happen again, sitting safely next to someone who cares, and even though he’s still not sure it’s not a dream, he’s going to treasure it.

Something beeps inside Keith’s helmet and he gets up, groaning with reluctance. “I’ve got to go help coordinate rides for the rest of the ex-prisoners,” he says. “There’s only seven of us with Voltron so we’re short on hands. But I’ll be back soon.”

“Okay,” says Shiro.

Keith starts to turn, then looks back at Shiro. “Can I—” he asks, and opens his arms.

Shiro stumbles into the hug. Keith is warm and steady as Shiro half-collapses against him, wrapping his hand in the back of Keith’s shirt.

“Shhh,” Keith whispers, a little awkwardly but it goes on the list of the nicest things Shiro’s ever heard. “Shhh, you’re okay.”

“Yeah,” Shiro whispers back. His voice breaks. “I’m okay.”

“Yeah you are,” Keith whispers. He rubs Shiro’s back for a moment, then loosens his grip. Slowly, Shiro pries his fingers open and lets Keith go.

“I’ll be back soon,” Keith promises, backing out of the room. “Okay?”

Shiro smiles as best he can. “I’ll be here.”

As Keith disappears, Matt comes up beside Shiro. Shiro turns to him, biting his lip.

“It still,” he starts, stumbling over how to say what he means. “It feels like—Matt, are you sure we’re here?”

“Damn sure,” Matt says, even though his face is creased with doubt. “We made it, Shiro. We’re safe; we’re out.”

“Yeah, well,” Shiro mutters, “no thanks to me.”

“So what?” Matt folds his arms. “You don’t have to always be the one to save the day. You tried, we both tried, we did our best. And in the end, we needed help. So damn what?”

Guilt keeps burrowing in Shiro’s chest. Keith shouldn’t be here; he should be safe. Matt’s dad should be safe. No one should have to throw themselves into danger for him.

But he’s tired still, and he doesn’t want to fight with Matt—not now, not when the rescue is so new, when he’s still flinching at every noise and struggling with the urge to get his back against a wall so no one can creep up on him. He doesn’t want anything between them.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “What I did in the arena—I just wanted to save you.”

Matt bites his lip. “I know,” he says. “But you know, sometimes I’d like to save you too.”

“You did,” Shiro tells him. He slips his arm around Matt’s shoulders. “I can’t even tell you how much you saved me.”

Matt moves in for a hug and Shiro squeezes tight, resting his chin gently on the top of Matt’s head. Sun leaks into the room through some panel, mixing with the fine blue lights, and their breathing keeps time. Everything is bright, soft, as Shiro’s mind swirls with the beauty of relief.

\----

“Do the lions do this all the time?” Shiro asks. He’s sitting on a stool in Pidge’s lab, his brand-new Altean prosthetic laid out across the table in front of him. Matt and Pidge are both bent over it, following some diagrams provided by Hunk.

“Do what?” Pidge asks.

“Roar,” says Shiro. “In everyone’s heads.”

Matt’s eyes track slowly up to Shiro’s face. “I’ve never heard them roar in my head. Katie, do they do it to you?”

“Just Green,” Pidge says. “She talks, too. Are you hearing all of them, Shiro?”

Shiro squints. “No,” he says. “Yes. Mostly just one, though.”

“Ask which one it is,” Pidge advises. “Matt, hand me that screwdriver.”

“Geez, bossy,” mutters Matt. He passes it over, though.

Shiro tries to focus on the presence in his head. It’s—uncomfortable, in a lot of ways; he feels vulnerable and small. What are you doing, he thinks at it, and he can’t help the hint of defensiveness. What do you want from me?

There aren’t words, exactly, in response. But there’s a wave of feelings, care and respect and pride, and Shiro pulls away from it. Who are you, he thinks back, and images flashes in his brain: the black lion, himself in the cockpit.

Shiro drags his mind away from it and opens his eyes. Pidge and Matt are staring at him.

“She,” Shiro stutters, “she wants me. The black lion.”

Matt glances at Pidge. Pidge pulls a face at him.

“We should tell dad,” she says.

“Tell dad what?”

It’s Doc Holt, stepping into the lab. Shiro tries to come to attention, but Matt pins both his arms down on the table.

“At ease, Shiro,” Doc Holt says. “Katie, what were you going to tell me?”

“Uh,” says Pidge. “Well, Shiro—Shiro should tell you, because it’s in his brain, it’s about him. Right Shiro?”

Shiro takes a deep breath. “You pilot the black lion,” he starts, tentatively.

“That I do.” Doc Holt smiles, his face gentle. “But she’s been restless lately, working with an old fogey like me.”

“She—” Shiro swallows hard. He’s scared and he doesn’t know why—he’s out, after all, and it’s not like Doc Holt would hurt him. “She’s talking to me, Commander.”

“Funny,” says Doc Holt. “She’s been talking to me too. About you.”

“Commander,” Shiro starts, “I don’t—I’m not sure I can—”

“I know, son.” Doc Holt settles on the stool across from Shiro, wedging himself between his kids. “Black does too.  If you don’t want to lead Voltron, you don’t have to. Or if you want to take some time and recover before you decide, you can do that too.”

“Personal autonomy is back on the table,” Matt sums up.

“Operation: Make Choices is a go!” Pidge grins. “Hey, I’m gonna close this panel back up. Can you move around a bit to see if the arm’s working smoother?”

“Sure, Pidge,” Shiro says. “Anything particular you need me to test?”

Matt thoughtfully taps at the panel that Pidge has just screwed shut. “Maybe the range of motion in the thumb?”

Shiro wiggles his thumb. “It’s good,” he says. “It’s really good. Thanks.”

“Course,” says Pidge. “Hey Dad, can I give myself a cybernetic enhancement? I was thinking like, an eye upgrade, or maybe a built-in jetpack in case the one on my suit breaks? I don’t know how I’d make a built-in jetpack but I could try, and—”

“Slow down there, kiddo,” Doc Holt says. “Let’s see how Shiro’s arm works out first, okay?”

“Aww,” Pidge groans. “Fine.”

“Speaking of upgrades,” Matt says. He pulls off his hopelessly bent glasses. “Can we do something about these?”

Pidge perks up again. “You should ask Hunk! He could make you new frames. The lenses seem like they’re still okay.”

“You could give me your frames.” Matt swipes at Pidge’s glasses.

“Hey, don’t steal my cybernetic enhancements!”

“You don’t even need them!”

Shiro laughs. It’s getting easier, laughing, especially when Matt and Pidge and Doc Holt all join in.

Matt grabs for Shiro’s new prosthetic hand and waves it around. “Hi, I’m Shiro’s right hand,” he says in a faux-serious voice. “I lead Voltron and I hereby order you, Katie Pidge Gunderson-Holt, to give your glasses frames to Matt—”

“I don’t lead Voltron,” Shiro protests, but he doesn’t pull away. The Altean tech is sensitive enough that he can sense the gentle pressure, the warmth of Matt’s hand. And he was ready to die that way, their fingers interlaced, but now he’s starting to think he’s ready to live—ready to stand against the Galra, hand-in-hand with everyone who rescued him in a thousand ways.


End file.
